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Higgs - Hunting the invisibile

Director: Mischka Popp, Thomas Bergman

Photography: Meinolf Scmitz

Sound: Meinolf Scmitz

Production: Pilotfilm Frankfurt, ZDF

Germany

60 min.

2000

For physics researchers the challenge of this new century is increasingly hidden in the infinitely small. It is a particle, one of those fleeting elements, invisible but with a name: Higgs boson. All over the world there are experiments being prepared, sophisticated instruments and theories are being developed to seek it out. Even the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva has started up a project for building a new particle accelerator, called the LHC, whose scope is to identify this boson. At the CERN there are scientists from all European countries at work. The quest for this particle involves what is known as Big Science - an enormous entity made up of supranational projects with mind-boggling funding and huge structures.
This documentary follows the traces of what looks increasingly to be one of the great adventures of modern science. In fact, Higgs' boson is well known to scientists and, on paper, seems to be the smallest particle implicated in the events that gave origin to the world, the famous Big Bang. The only problem is that its very existence remains a mystery: no one has ever seen it.

Prix for Best scientific film from students jury at the XI Festival Prix Leonardo, Parma, 2001